


I'll show you something that the knife took

by scarecrowes



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Friendship, Historical, M/M, Organized Crime, Racism, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:11:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowes/pseuds/scarecrowes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, five times Charlie was there for Meyer, and one time he wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll show you something that the knife took

It’s 1915 and there’s blood dripping over Meyer’s knuckles. He’s fairly sure he’s broken something - in his hand, maybe - but he barely feels it, after the first dull crack. He’s too busy screaming, his English breaking under the violence of his voice so half of what comes out is harsh Yiddish and  _swearing._  
  
But it doesn’t matter, really, when the older boy under him is too busy spitting blood and trying to cover his face, failing miserably as Meyer hits him again, broken skin over bruises over chipped teeth, over and _over_  and-  
  
Someone _lifts_  him, grip tight on the back of his collar and that alone is enough for him to scream louder,  _fucking get the fuck off you fucking stupid-_ , because he’s small and the ease with which he’s moved only makes the fire in his stomach burn worse.  
  
He’s thrown and pinned to the wall - it’s the other one, large and freckled, red haired and missing three teeth where Meyer kicked them out.  
  
“Gonna fucking kill you, you little kike shit!”  
  
There’s a second, too, that Meyer thinks he might, because he’s off the ground without leverage to throw the boy, and the claw of his nails and strike of his feet seem to be doing nothing. He doesn’t close his eyes for the hit, just watches the Irish teen draw back his fist and spits the blood in his mouth to make him wince and swear even as he’s about to--  
  
 _CRACK._  
  
Suddenly Meyer’s on the ground, heaving air and scraping the alley wall for purchase - and the Irish kid isn’t moving, slumped on the concrete with his head bent back.  
  
There’s someone else - older and dark, grip still tight on the pipe he’d slammed into the Irish boy’s head. It might have blood on it. Meyer can’t tell, dazed and shaking with raw energy in the dark.  
  
“Yeah, stay down, ya Mick fucker.”  
  
Meyer’s on his feet by the time the Italian turns to him. He’s prepared to fight further if he has to, but for the moment he’s distracted by the blood soaking into scraps of newspaper on the ground, dripping from the Irish kid’s head, and he isn’t  _moving_  and -  
  
“You ok, kid?”  
  
He’s vaguely aware that his hand hurts.  
  
“Hey!” A rough tap to his shoulder and he does turn, quick and stepping back like a furied dog.  
  
“The fuck you want, dago?”  
  
“Heh, hell of a thanks for saving your sorry ass, ya little shit.” A beat, and huff of breath. “..I fuckin’ know you, don’t I?”  
  
“Wouldn’t give you a nickel.” Meyer snaps, wondering if he could wrestle that pipe away, if he had to. “Still ain’t gonna, so don’t fuckin’ ask, asshole.”  
  
The Italian boy snorts, shaking his head. “Wasn’t gonna.” He pauses - head tilting, scrutinizing in a way that reminds Meyer of a cat - and grabs for Meyer’s wrist.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“...Your fucking fingers are broken, Jew boy. You wanna go home to your mama like that?”  
  
He isn’t about to admit  _no_ , so he just spits onto the pavement and wrenches his hand away - though it _hurts_ , enough that he can’t bite down on the hiss of pain that cuts through his teeth.  
  
Which is why, in spite of the hour and how he knows his mother will fret over his bruises as much as returning home so long after dark, he ends up perched on Salvatore’s kitchen counter with the Italian binding a makeshift splint around his fingers.  
  
“Who’s the kid, Sal?”  
  
“None a’ your fuckin’ business, Adonis.” The Italian bites back at his roommate, and waves for him to pass over the bottle he’s holding. He pushes it into Meyer’s undamaged hand, grinning around the cigarette balanced on his lip.  
  
“Drink up, kid.” He laughs, standing too close and smelling like Lucky Strikes and the iodine he’d cleaned Meyer’s cuts with. “Best medicine I can give ya.”  
  
Meyer does - and feels vaguely sick, later, head spinning and sprawled on the floor with too much alcohol in him for all of his size - but he’s quiet, still.  
  
Salvatore smirks at him from his perch on the windowsill.  
  
“I still expect that fuckin’ nickel from ya sometime, Lansky.”  
  
Funny, how he waited until Meyer couldn’t stand.  
  


* * *

  
It’s summer of 1922, and Meyer’s pushing his forehead into his desk like he could steal a chill from the wood. It’s  _hot,_  the flimsy blinds under newspaper drawn down and all the windows thrown open, but none of it is doing much for the heat soaking into his skin and making his shirt stick, even with his tie undone and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.  
  
It’s quiet, too, and all he wants to do is go _home,_  except he knows it’s too hot for him to sleep off the rest of the afternoon. He has books to keep, as well, if he could only manage to pick his pen back up, and -  
  
And the door is suddenly slammed open hard enough he does sit up, hand fumbling for his gun holster which he foolishly took off in the heat and-  
  
And it’s Charlie.  
  
He’s shucking off his jacket even as he kicks the door closed, curls fallen loose over his forehead and frizzing out in snarls like Meyer’s more used to from years before. Before AR, before anyone called him anything but Sal, before they owned weapons more than a shiv or a brick picked up in an alley.  
  
And Charlie’s _grinning_ , wide-eyed and manic, still breathing like he ran the length of blocks.  
  
“I fuckin’ did it.”  
  
Meyer blinks, leaning back. “Did what?”  
  
“Valenti. Joe had  _me_  go. I was just organizin’ it, I told you, but he had me go, me an’ some other guys, and-”  
  
He’s talking miles a minute, and Meyer only catches it with minimal effort because he’s used to this - all of Charlie’s tight energy and speed of pacing and moving hands coming out in a violent burst because he’s  _excited._  
  
“-jumped on the back of a goddamn cab, the fuck, but-”  
  
It’s not like Charlie to  _brag,_  but Meyer knows this is more than that. This isn’t just a toe in the door, something to impress or catch the right kind of attention. He’s through it entirely, now.  
  
He’s  _made._  
  
There’s something in it that sits heavy in Meyer’s chest - a small gap in their seamless pattern, together tooth and nail from back alleys on up.  
  
But Charlie catches it - like he does everything, as much as he’ll never ask  _why,_ and he rocks back on his heels before his weight finally settles, again. He’s never _still_ , would be wrong if he tried, but he tips his head and pulls out cigarettes for them both. Meyer’s fingers brush his without comment as he passes it along.   
  
“We should go drinkin’. To celebrate, like.”  
  
He says it grinning again, and Meyer laughs, slumping low in his chair.  
  
“S’ too fucking hot to go out, Charlie.”  
  
“So we get somethin’ to sit around with.” The Sicilian shrugs, sitting on the edge of Meyer’s desk and cuffing his arm amicably. “Not the cheap shit, either. Tonight we get good stuff. You can stay over, huh?”  
  
Meyer rolls his eyes - in the heat one of them will probably end up sleeping on the floor, particularly considering Charlie’s warmth rolls off him like a furnace even on cold nights-  but he nods all the same.  
  
The gun on Charlie’s hip might still be hot to the touch, but with both of them sweat-stuck when he’s tugged close, he can’t tell.  
  


* * *

  
“Fuck.”  
  
The snapped word hits him from across the room, and Meyer glances up from the numbers he was working to find Charlie wincing as he struggles to light his cigarette.  
  
“Fuck!” Charlie snarls again, and Meyer frowns - the Italian’s face is still in stitches, black thread cutting through his dark skin with bandages over the rougher gashes in his cheek. His morphine’s probably wearing off, and his hand is hovering close to the wounds.  
  
“You’re gonna pull your stitches, you keep poking at ‘em.”  
  
“Fuck you!” Charlie growls, and while Meyer knows the fury there is mostly from pain, he still shoves his chair back and closes the distance between them to tug roughly at Charlie’s curls, so the man bats at his fingers and yelps.  
  
“Don’t be a shit.” Meyer tells him, though Charlie doesn’t quiet entirely - he glares around Meyer’s wrist and bares his teeth, cigarette still gripped between them.  
  
“This shit  _hurts_.”  
  
He isn’t whining so much as declaring it like Meyer didn’t know - and the younger man smiles something like sympathetically, tapping Charlie’s uninjured cheek.  
  
“So get more morphine, idiot.” He motions for Charlie to hand him his lighter, flicking it enough for Charlie to inhale - and he eases almost immediately, if by fractions, with smoke in his lungs.  
  
“Don’t feel like it.” The Sicilian grumbles. “Makes my head feel funny.”  
  
And it is odd - to see Charlie clouded so often lately, however he could function well enough through it. Same as in the hospital weeks ago, as much as Meyer had joked at the stories they could tell. He’d stayed until long after visiting hours just to talk, with both of them pretending it didn’t remind them both a little too much of gathering books, a year ago - or Carolyn’s hard stare, the last time they saw her before she left for England.  
  
Some things had been different for a long time, dulled and tight in his chest.  
  
But Charlie shifts and leans into his hand, fingers returned to thick black curls without pulling, this time. Meyer knows it’s a small comfort he’d never outright ask for - and doesn’t need to, for all he’s pushed his cheek to Meyer’s chest some nights and hummed quiet, pleasant approval once Meyer ran a hand over the crown of his head.  
  
“Can’t wait to get this shit off.” Charlie mumbles, mostly smothered in Meyer’s shirt, and glances up at the shake of Meyer laughing. “What?”  
  
“Nothing.” And it was nothing - just Charlie, _Lucky Charlie_ , who half the city was already whispering about. He’d heard it already, spread from Benny’s mouth or his or no one’s at all - talk of war wounds and ice picks and ropes tied to rafters when all their prince had suffered were the fists of a few angry cops and a disoriented tumble into the mud on Long Island.  
  
And they’ll keep talking. He knows that - until it boils under Joe’s skin, and Maranzano’s enough that they pay attention to more than the blood they’re spilling in the streets.  
  
He ruffles Charlie’s hair again, absently pondering his own two fingers that healed just a little crooked - splinted haphazardly with iodine and smoke in their lungs.  
  
He knows, maybe before Charlie ever does, that it’ll be them at each other's hip at the top, once the old dogs kill each other off or bend the knee.  
  
Charlie kicks him when he squeezes too tight, pushing injured skin too close to his ribcage, and Meyer laughs at himself. "Sorry."

Their scars will only serve to help them get there, in the end.  
  


* * *

 

Meyer meets Thomas Dewey face to face just once, before Charlie’s sentence comes down on all of their heads. It never touches Meyer, of course - so close and careful that there’s no trace of him, in all the names that Charlie lies about not knowing, on the stand.  
  
“He’s a terrible liar, you know.” Dewey says, over his desk - and Meyer, distracted, thinks of the handful of meetings AR had with Fallon that he’d been privy to.  
  
There’s little of that here.  
  
“He’s a good boy, our Charlie.” Meyer smiles, thinking only  _you baby faced fuck_ , with his hand over his heart. “Too honest for his own good.”  
  
There’s a certain level of charm, in the way Dewey smiles - like he would to a jury, telling them how unsafe they are, how their money is the blood pumping through the veins of  _crime._  
  
Meyer hates him more than he can put to words.  
  
But it remains that Meyer keeps their books and keeps all of Charlie’s investments afloat - which he would even if half of them weren’t also his own. Dewey deals them a blow, but every mention of Charlie’s name isn’t about how his testimony fell flat - and they aren’t only whispers, anymore.  
  
Dewey meant to drag him down, and when Meyer meets with Charlie handfuls of times in Dannemora there  _are_  pieces missing - the heat of standing close not the biggest but certainly the one he feels for, not back to back like they should be against everyone.  
  
It burns him - but he’ll be damned if it shows. He sets his teeth on Vito’s plans to claim the throne they took, and Frank takes it, instead - Frank who will listen to Charlie as much as Meyer, and none of them made to stand in his shadow.  
  
He passes Charlie food and extra blankets on his visits most times, _I’m tired a’ hearing you grouse about how fucking cold you are, asshole._  The flash of teeth is still there when Lucky smiles, same as recognition in a dark back alley years enough ago that Meyer shouldn’t remember it so clear.  
  
“We getting me outta this shithole soon, Little Man?”  
  
Charlie asks it quiet, leaning close as he can with the distance they’re made to keep. His breath is visible in the air.  
  
Meyer just smiles tight, the same as he did at stitches and broken fingers.  
  
“Sure. Lawyer says he’s hoping, don’t he?”  
  
And Charlie nods, maybe still half caught in the daze of  _how is this happening to **me,**_ but all his fire’s there, and for how lean he’s gotten his eyes still glow flint in the overhead lights.  
  
“Yeah,” he grins, and for all he can’t lie, Meyer falls into the trap of Charlie wanting to  _believe_  him.  
  
  


* * *

 

In ’46 Charlie catches him off guard. They’re in Havana, warm on liquor and food, humming what Sinatra had been crooning before and stumbling back to their rooms. He’d been unsure all night in spite of that and the fervent back-and-forth they’d given everyone,  _we’ll make Vegas look like horseshit -_   how much nine years, nine months put distance between them. He watches Charlie grin and flirt with younger girls, thinks of Anna quietly breaking back home. There was a split between himself and Lucky even when they’d met and bumped knees under a table to discuss the Navy, during the war, and how badly Charlie really  _shouldn’t_  pull on a helmet and parachute for the good of the cause.

(Frank had laughed, and Meyer had too until he’d seen the  _severity_  in Charlie’s eyes, sighing and tucking it back with a  _no, Luck, you’ll do us better right here_.)  
  
But the minute they’re safe, when Meyer finds Charlie’s pushed them into his room and locked the door behind him, he finds himself smothered in heat and the warm smell of Lucky Strikes, pomade and expensive cologne, silk shirt pushed into his cheek. Charlie dares, rumbling something like _missed you_ , to grab him so tight that his toes skate the floor - and Meyer allows it, just this once, without kicking or snapping something hard like _put me down you dago fuck._  Instead he turns his head with Charlie’s buried against his shoulder and tells him, quietly -  
  
“Missed you too, Charlie.”  
  
He means it, as much as he doesn’t need Charlie’s arms slung around his waist, because he knows Charlie  _does._  
  
And the minute his feet hit the floor again Meyer shoves the Sicilian back into the door, a dull thud the older man balks at, laughing in surprise that turns to a familiar hummed purr with Meyer’s hand knotting in his hair. Never mind that there’s silver there, now, peeking in at the edges of all his dark like a reminder of what he built just to be kept from; and never mind that Meyer’s old scars have started to ache, just vague things in the bends of his fingers when the weather gets cold.  
  
He’s warm here, though, biting the edge of Charlie’s jaw,  _right here, right here, still yours-_  
  
And it’s a day or so later that they’ll finally have to broach the subject of Benny, of Virginia Hill leeching money from their pockets and their fellows clamoring for blood. Meyer talks them down - and months later, when it comes to a head again and he doesn’t dare hope, he turns to Charlie anyway, like he could try.  
  
And his friend’s eyes go dark, when he has to tell Meyer no.  
  
 _He broke the rules. There’s nothin’ to argue about._  
  
There’s a second Meyer wants to hate him. Wants to, in spite of everything else, like he wanted to hate Rothstein once for falling so far. But Charlie’s finally found that black spot that Meyer did years ago, the one that says  _your heart is not wanted here_ , and it gets you to close off and grow cold around it every time you have to sign off on someone’s life when you once promised them you’d keep them _safe._  
  
But he finds Charlie later still, feet kicked out like no one could think to find him sulking in the hallway, cigarettes stubbed out next to him in a stack like the carpet wasn’t nearly as expensive as his suit.  
  
“...’M sorry.”  
  
His voice is quieter and something as close to broken as Meyer’s ever heard it - even the drooping crags of his scars seem bleached out, lost in the hurt that’s too plain even for Charlie’s face.  
  
 _He’s a terrible liar, you know._  
  
Meyer wants to walk away, wants to kick him and rip open all his old wounds - break him open like he did a fairer, younger boy that he damaged fingers over, years ago.  
  
But Charlie - who once cracked a child’s head open for him, who never grabbed him by the scruff of his neck like he was any smaller or couldn’t _fight,_  Charlie’s already doing the same. Even now, in the hall with Sinatra’s croon and their boys’ party clamor humming up from lower floors he can see Charlie  _picking_ , like he did his best not to for the marks left in his cheek as they’d healed.  
  
And Meyer wants to stay, get him drunk, fill him with smoke and the heated sound he only makes for girls outside of what they’ve got,  _the best medicine I got for you._  But Benny will be full of holes in a handful of days, and Meyer knows what it’s like to know no one’s coming, in time or at all, when you’re on your knees before the bullet.  
  
So Meyer tugs Charlie up by his sleeve and makes him come inside, again, because not even the hotel maids need to see the way he smiles, bitterly, with his friend shivering and buried tight against his shirt.  
  
“It’s okay, Charlie.” He says it empty, but it will mean something once he does it enough. “It’s gonna be okay.” He pushes lips into Charlie’s dark curls and lies to him, in a way that isn’t quite.  
  
“With him gone I’m only gonna have you, now, ya know.”  
  
And Charlie, thankfully, doesn’t smile.  
  
 _There’s always still us._  
  


* * *

  
It’s June again, and he’s found little to do but stare at the ceiling. It isn’t cracked or water-stained - it’s plain white, in fact, and clean and tidy like the rest of the room, at least as much as he’d kept it since arriving.  
  
Get bed rest, he was told. Keep off your feet. Take care of yourself.  
  
He really just wants a cigarette.  
  
And he can, if he just reaches over to grab them from the nightstand - the pack and lighter he assured Sandi he wasn’t using, on the phone days before. His little girl was all concern and none of her mother’s nerves, _you know what’ll happen if you keep smoking those things, dad, it’s stupid to just keep on..._  
  
“But I’m old.” he tells the ceiling, because he couldn’t tell her with the same sincerity. “Don’t really matter, does it?”  
  
Heart attack. He supposes that’s what happens when they all avoid bullets so long - long enough for their hair to get gray and the crooked slant of two of his fingers starting to keep him from bending them properly, on bad days.  
  
He’d punched Albert Anastasia in the teeth once, and now his twenty-four year old daughter was fussing, all the way from Florida - because he had a _heart attack._  
  
“Fuck.” he tells the ceiling, because there’s no one else to mutter it to.  
  
Same thing took Charlie, a few months back.  
  
He’d visited the cemetery just once, since then, to make sure they were keeping the mausoleum in order - and they were, because inevitably it was someone’s cousin or brother in law who was keeping the grounds and knew that name like it was set in their damn bones.  
  
 _You fucking Italians know everybody,_  he’d told Charlie once, laughing, and Charlie just grinned and mentioned that it was _useful._  
  
Which it is, still - that and Frank’s careful knowledge of just about everyone, when Meyer’s connections don’t cover enough.  _We’re bigger than U.S. Steel_ , and they still were - never mind that no one might know it, after a time.  
  
He rubs a hand absently over his chest, the ticking of his heart still present, somehow - thinks of the last time he visited Naples, before Igea died and Charlie’s drive for business went to shit, and the dark eyed girl had grinned at him more honestly than Gay or Thelma ever did.  
  
There’s a part of him that was still confused that Charlie could care about her more than all he’d come to own, after it all. She was just a kid - which, alone, wasn’t fair.  
  
But then - nothing was.  
  
He considers it sometimes - because he has time left to, not knowing it, the span of years in spades - what might have been. If he’d figured something out, for Charlie to come back, to be more than a name showing up in the paper or down people’s throats whenever they needed favors.  
  
If he’d turned to him one of those last times, when he’d stepped off a plane like he might have once climbed through a window from the fire escape, told him  _fuck it, I can stay,_  and leave everything - all of this, his kids and his busted heart - behind.  
  
He thinks it never would have worked. Something in them changed with age, the pieces sold off to girls and profit on the way. He never asked for Charlie’s shadow on his back - but once there was no one to call, anymore, he considers pockets full of nickels he could’ve passed along, pushed into Charlie’s fingers or left on gravestone steps through the crooked bends in his hands.  
  
“He earned it.”  
  
The ceiling doesn’t snap back, and that’s okay. He has his kids. He has business to run.

He has things tucked away - iodine and cheap beer, investments, and a thickset emerald ring too big for any of his fingers.  
  
It’s just... quiet.


End file.
